TrimiteSOS.ro (Send SOS)

TrimiteSOS.ro project was born in February 2012, when hundreds of communities in Romania were isolated due to heavy snow falls. One week after the first snowfall, communities and families affected were still being discovered and the media was discussing million dollar projects still uncompleted which could have ensured a better monitoring of local communities in difficulty.

Until such projects are ready, open-source solutions already exist that can help the affected communities by giving them the possibility to send their signals for help to the authorities, media or the general public. Ushahidi is an instrument developed for this very purpose by a group of programmers in Kenya in 2008. Since then, the instrument was adopted by initiative groups in dozens of countries around the world to assist communities affected by violence outbursts, diseases, corruption phenomena, earthquakes etc. For a better understanding of the Ushahidi functionality, play the adjacent video or access the initiative presentation page.

We have customized the Ushahidi platform to the emergency situations affecting Romania and made it available at www.trimiteSOS.ro. We were not ready to assist communities affected by snow in early February but the platform is now available and ready to support monitoring of the following emergency situations due to weather phenomena, including as a result of the heavy snowfall (e.g., floods , etc.). In this endeavor, we teamed up with a group of volunteers that support both the technical configuration as well as the communication of this tool to its target beneficiaries.

We are also open to partner with organizations interested in adapting the platform to assist the monitoring of local elections this year (see a similar application in Bulgaria and India).